Manual labor movies? (halp me pls)

You know those instances where you feel you could rattle off a hundred examples of something, but as soon as you're in a position where you actually have to come up with an example of that thing, you can't?

I'm looking for examples of movies that check one or more of these boxes:

- Manual labor is used as punishment or public deterrent.

- The bodies of laborers signify the types of labor they do (weathered hands, sensory impairments, crooked posture, etc.)

- An underclass is subjected to environmental hazards that affect their bodies or behavior (e.g., lead poisoning, Mako eyes).

- Generally, a movie in which someone's socioeconomic position marks their body or behavior in a readily legible way like certain accents, dialects, and dictions do, only the mark is visually rather than auditorially readable.

Never Let Me Go and The Island are close to the type of thing I'm looking for. Jaws is almost there. Modern Times and The Wrestler are closer. Spirited Away is in the wheelhouse, too. Do the Riddick movies participate in something like this with blindness being a product of working as a miner? Anything else come to mind?

Thanks!

Running man obviously.

Just one or two of those things?
Mad Max
Star Gate
Ghost in the Shell
Total Recall

Cool Hand Luke

Star Trek VI
Temple of Doom

Alien is the best example of this I can think of.

I love you all. These are really good; thank you. I should have mentioned that episodes of TV shows are also up for grabs. I feel like there are a million episodes of Star Trek TOS that deal in gulags and visually distinct underclasses, but I'm blanking.

Alien is a homerun, but I'm already using it for something else! I think the only reason I'm in academia is that I can force people to talk to me about Alien.

Not a particularly iconic example, but the first thing that pops into my head is Spartacus (series) where all of the slaves that either can't make it as gladiators or are being disciplined get sent to work in the salt mines.

Edit: The Wall in GoT could almost work too. It's definitely a punishment, involves manual labor, and those dudes are always talking about losing body parts to frostbite.

Killjoys had an episode this season about worker cyborgs.

Dude, stop reading Karl Marx.

Wreck it Ralph

Quote:

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Originally Posted by A Robot Bit Me

I love you all. These are really good; thank you. I should have mentioned that episodes of TV shows are also up for grabs. I feel like there are a million episodes of Star Trek TOS that deal in gulags and visually distinct underclasses, but I'm blanking.

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this is the episode you're looking for

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708456/

e: there was also a tng episode where the people on one planet fed people on another planet drugs to keep them subversively working if that's another thing you're looking for, in addition to the jem hadar from ds9

How about Dune?

The book is better about it though, even describing the physical changes as young elite Paul turns into hardened desert warrior.

wtf dude.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0-2hlsvcEc

Brazil
Hunger Games
And the Rutger Hauer classic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWBY_DncCME

Ben Hur. Ramming speed!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifl-N4RBpVI

Wait, I meant:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqlOK05vFLE

Cloud Atlas, which I hated, had the thing with the asian service worker ladies. The Postman comes to mind, as well.

That ww2. Bridge movie maybe.

Blade Runner? Forced-labor revolt from generated work force.

THX 1138

If Blade Runner counts then so does Soldier.

I considered adding Soldier, but then watched the trailer and decided not to.

Blade Runner is a good pick, but the connections might be a reach for first-year undergrads.

I haven't seen a whole bunch of these (most of the SSJN recommendations, Dune, THX, etc.). This weekend is gonna be a good one :tu:.

And, yes, The Cloud Minders was exactly the TOS episode I was thinking of. Thanks, cka.

Thanks again for coming through, y'all! I knew you would.

I...I can't believe you've never seen The Time Machine (though you've probably read it. I'd hope anyway). It's like EXACTLY what you're talking about. Sort of.
I'll give you a pass on The Blood of Heroes aka Salute of the Jugger. If it weren't for late night Cinemax in the 90s, I would never have seen it. But I loved it. Still do.
Metroplis (the real one) is like cinema 101. Everyone should watch it.
I think I've seen you post about Brazil, so maybe that's where the "most" came from. His last film The Zero Theorem may fit too.

I almost recommended The Black Hole, but those folks were lobotomized into servitude.

I've seen Brazil and Metropolis. I'm shying away from Brazil since I'm already assigning another satire as part of a different assignment and I'm worried students will just spell out Brazil's allegories and pass that off as analysis. And I'm shying away from Metropolis because I don't think I can get a class full of undergrads in a mandatory composition course to watch a silent movie, especially if they have the option to write about a second or third film instead. If this were an elective I'd be all over it.

I didn't even know there was a Time Machine movie before your post! Much less one worth recommending.

wat

This guy.

Office Space for institutionalized revolution, Primer for self-employed destruction. Texas Chain Saw Massacre is about butchers?

They Live

Would Kurosawa's The Lower Depths or The Bicycle Thief fit your themes?

Antz

This is an odd request, but I like it!

If you're game for documentaries, Michael Glawoggers films Whores Glory and Workingmans Death are pretty great (but dark as fuck)

Time Bandits

Great thread. I can think of three examples not yet mentioned off the top of my head:

Django Unchained
Enemy Mine
No Escape (the Ray Liotta sci-fi original, not the recent film with Lake Bell and Owen Wilson)

In both Django Unchained and Enemy Mine, the protagonist is captured and sent to work in a mine at the end of the second act, which sets up the conflict in their respective third acts. (And please, if for some reason you haven't seen Enemy Mine, go do it now.)

In No Escape, Ray Liotta is a soldier who kills his CO and gets shipped to a prison island to do manual labor.

The Descent? I'm reaching.

Good call on all those sleeve.

Gattaca.

The Matrix?

Grapes of Wrath seems almost too obvious.

Moses
Shawshank Redemption
The Longest Yard (Burt Reynolds)
Gladiator
Conan the Barbarian
Escape from Alcatraz
Unbroken
Rescue Dawn

Time Machine was so rad. It's pretty much the best Star Trek TOS movie.

O Brother Where Art Thou

Hi! Hello!

I used a bunch of these recommendations for in-class exercises and they really helped struggling students make connections to readings and talk about film in terms other than plot and dialogue.

Because I'll not be giving any of you jerks credit within my class or department, I just wanted to post to say thank you, friends!

Eat it, slut!

lol, that's rad.

What did you use is the real question.